Games go to Beijing, glory sure to follow

The Games that meant so much to Greece had ended a resounding success. It was only appropriate then that the closing ceremony was one boisterous Greek party.

At the opening, Greece had been burdened by its past. It had to show off the face the world expected to see — the Greece of antiquity, of Zeus and Hercules, Alexander and Homer.

On August 29, Greece had nothing to prove. It could relax, be itself. The ceremony showcased folk dances — the little things done by the little people that, more than conquest and history, make a country what it is. A non-stop concert by a succession of Greek pop stars had the crowd on its feet. From the singers on stage and the swaying people all around, Greece seemed less a nation, more a supermodel factory.

When a video-montage of Greek screen goddesses appeared on the giant screen, the loudest cheers came for the late Melina Mercouri, who moved from films to become national culture minister.

Mercouri was one of the chain of strong-willed, brassy and attractive Greek women who so embellish public life. Surely Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki will join now that pantheon. She was only head of the Games organizing committee; today, she may as well have been Queen of Greece.

With the Olympics, Greece sought to project itself as a modern economy, provide evidence of the evolution from old to new. Change was very much the operative theme on August 29. It was symbolized, in more ways than intended perhaps, when the Olympic flag was handed over by the mayor of Athens — Dora Bakogianni, another of those dazzling and dazzlingly successful women who make Greek politics so fascinating — to the mayor of Beijing. The Chinese presence was appropriate. The host nation of 2008 finished second at the Games, its 32 golds just three behind the United States. The sporting world is on the cusp of a power shift. That is the big picture coming out of Athens.

Western sports officials and journalists no longer talk of China taking over the US supremacy of world sport — unchallenged for a century — as a possibility. Rather, it is an inevitability. When Chinese officials boast of ‘‘winning 50 gold medals in Beijing’’, nobody sniggers.

In the coming days, there will be much focus on China’s prep school-to-podium training system. It churns out champions with such regularity that even the women’s tennis doubles team won the gold .

China’s sports budget, insiders say, is astronomical. If you include what the provincial and central governments spend on school talent hunts, sports universities, local teams, inter-state competition, the budget, says Yue Zhou Ma, an army officer reporting from Athens for PLA Daily, ‘‘is six billion renminbi ($720m) a year’’.

Then he adds, smiling that eternally inscrutable Chinese smile, ‘‘At $20 m for a gold medal, I think it is a little expensive.’’

Money is matched with scale. At Athens, China took part in 26 of 28 disciplines, sparing only equestrian events and baseball. It was a medal contender at every venue. Sport is, however slowly, opening up its closed society. Its men’s basketball coach is William Harris, NBA veteran, former coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. It’s called investment.

In India, they are still debating whether Gerhard Rach ‘‘understands our culture’’, still figuring out the cut-price approach to Olympic glory.